DINNER BENEFITS MEALS ON WHEELS

By MARIAN BURROS

Published: March 16, 1983

THOSE who dine instead of eat and sip instead of gulp decked themselves out in their medals and decorations last Sunday night to eat an eight-course degustation dinner and wash it down with Champagne and vintage wines to help those who often have nothing to eat on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

The event, an auction and dinner at Le Perigord restaurant prepared by its chef, Antoine Bouterin, raised $70,000 for the city's Meals on Wheels program, which feeds 6,000 people five days a week.

Every penny went to increase the number of the city's house-bound elderly who will receive a hot meal on Saturdays and Sundays because the sponsors, seven of the city's wine and food societies, had no expenses. Georges Briguet, who owns Le Perigord, was able to cajole his waiters, captains and busboys into working for nothing on their one night off. When the dishwashers heard about the dinner they insisted on donating their time, too.

Most of those in attendance, from the composer Cy Coleman and the mime Marcel Marceau to the film writer Frank Perry and the restaurateur Alfredo Viazzi, said they came because they would hate to see their own parents in a similar predicament. Raquel Welch was there, because, she said, ''we shouldn't disenfranchise our grandmothers and great-aunts. I think it's very basic how we feed ourselves and how we treat our old people.''

When Miss Welch was appearing in ''Woman of the Year,'' she persuaded the cast to adopt one of the recipients of the Meals on Wheels program. They collected enough money to provide hot meals for the woman on weekends for an entire year.

This desire to contribute brought high prices for many of the auction items. Chosen to appeal to food and wine aficionados, they included dinner for two at Belgium's three Michelin three-star restaurants, dinner for two at eight of France's two-star restaurants, a baking lesson in Paris with Lionel Poulain, considered one of France's greatest bakers, and a week long barge trip to the vineyards of France.

Roger Yassen, head of La Chaine de Rotisseurs in the United States, paid $8,000 for 200 signed cookbooks from well-known chefs and cooks. Mr. Yassen described his purchase, which had a retail value of about $3,000, as ''one of the greatest collections of signed cookbooks in the world.''

Sirio Maccioni, the owner of Le Cirque, paid $500 for lunch with the wine authority Alexis Lichine at Chateau Prieure-Lichine in Bordeaux even though he said he ''already had three invitations'' to lunch when he is in Europe this summer.

The lawyer Victor Jacobs paid $700 for dinner for four at Le Cirque, so much more than it would normally cost that Mr. Maccioni said he would tell his chef to prepare anything the group wants. ''It's the first time I tell my chef: 'Anything,' '' he said.

A doctor from Albany, who asked that his name not be used, paid $1,500 for breakfast in bed from Zabar's, served by the food writer Gael Greene, who with the chef, Mr. Bouterin, had conceived the dinner and convinced the wine and food societies to sponsor it.

Mr. Briguet was skeptical of the entire arrangement. ''I was afraid half of the room would have left already,'' he said at 11:30 P.M. ''It was a Sunday night, and it was an eight-course meal.''

But most people were still there four hours after they had arrived at 7:45 P.M., marveling over the kitchen's ability to feed so many people so much good food at the same time. The dinner began with a soup of langoustines flavored with coriander, followed by a ragout of sweetbreads, brains and kidneys in a morel sauce; striped bass with a sauce of tomatoes, garlic, lemon and basil; pigeon consomme with thyme; a duck confit with a galette of potatoes; roast white meat of rabbit on steamed spinach; baked crottin de chavingol, individual disks of goat cheese, and a hot compote of fresh and dried fruits cooked in Port, served with creme fraiche and almond tuiles.

Many of the 116 guests, who paid a minimum of $200 to attend, are very serious about their wines and brought their own to trade back and forth. Jules I. Epstein, Northeast regional head of La Chaine de Rotisseurs, traded some of his 1955 Cheval-Blanc for some 1934 Volnay. Dr. Martin R. Katz, who brought a bottle of 1900 @Setubal, a Portuguese muscatel, traded some with Mr. Epstein for a taste of his Brane-Cantenac 1961.

But even those who had only the ''ordinary'' wines were drinking 1971 Haut-Brion donated by Harold Baron, owner of the Cork and Bottle, and 1973 Taittinger Blanc de Blanc Comte de Champagne, given by one of Le Perigord's suppliers.

Some of the wine and food society members were concerned that others would find such dining and wining inappropriate when those for whom they wined and dined are often without food. But the members outdid themselves in bidding up the prizes, prompting Jules Epstein to say: ''Now you know we are not all pigs and lushes.''